How to backup an Android phone on Ubuntu?

Is it possible to backup an Android mobile phone when connected to Ubuntu?

I have looked trough and searched here, but couldn't find any answers to this question. I have just bought an Android phone with Android 4. Any hints and tips on what I can sync with Ubuntu would be great. If you have any suggestions to apps I can use on Ubuntu to make it easier, please add the name of the app and how I can install it.

Solution 1:

Have you tried Airdoid?

I too have an Android v4 Smartphone and this is what I use to back up all the important files on my phone. Please note this is not an Ubuntu solution but it works perfectly with Firefox when used with Ubuntu. It allows me to backup both my system files and of course my all important docs, photos and other media files. Its a great interim solution while waiting for an FLOSS project to come up with perfect solution for Android users.

What is AirDroid?

AirDroid is a fast, free app that lets you wirelessly manage & control your Android devices (phone & tablet) from a web browser. It’s designed with the vision to bridge the gap between your Android device and web browser, on desktop computers or tablet devices, on Windows, Mac/iOS, or Linux.

What can you do with AirDroid?

You can use AirDroid to send/receive SMS (text messages, if supported by the device), install/uninstall apps, transfer files between Android device and computer/tablet, and manage contacts, photos, music, videos, and ringtones, etc., all in a web browser. Install AirDroid on your Android device and open your favorite web browser to experience it yourself.
How to get started with AirDroid and how to log in to AirDroid web desktop?

Download and install AirDroid app on your Android devices, start the app and open your favorite web browser, input the address and Dynamic Passcode to log in to AirDroid Web Desktop.

More Information here on the Official Airdroid website

Solution 2:

You can backup and restore devices with ADB. I have done so with a few devices from friends and family, including migrations to newer devices:

Solution Available for 4.0+ Devices:

For 4.0+ devices there is a solution called "adb backup". This makes use of adb so you have to have the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) installed on your computer (on some Linux distributions: just packages android-tools-adb and android-tools-adbd).

NOTE: This solution will not back up and restore contact, SMS or calendar information

The options for the adb command are:

adb backup [-f <file>] [-apk|-noapk] [-shared|-noshared] [-all] [-system|nosystem] [<packages...>]

Read the full article Full Backup of non-rooted devices and the info page in the tag wiki on our Android community site.

There are several apps to backup SMS from a non-rooted device in the Play Store, some of them save the data to the sdcard partition for convenience.

I have not tried if this works with an Ubuntu phone at the time of writing this and I wouldn't advise doing so. If you still want to experiment be sure that you are connected to the Ubuntu ADB instance, not an ADB instance that might be running in the Android LXC container on Ubuntu.

Solution 3:

Sync and Backup are not the same thing. As to my knowledge (and I'm quite involved with Android) there's no way to achieve a complete backup on a non-rooted device. However: if your device is rooted, there's a good way to achieve your goal:

On the ma... ahem, play-store you find an app called Titanium Backup, which is the ultimate backup tool for Android (you might also want to visit its homepage for more details, FAQ, Howto, etc.). This app will create a backup of all your apps and data, which then is stored to your SD-card. From there you can use apps like FTPSyncX or FolderSync to synchronize the backup directory with your (Ubuntu) PC via SSH, FTP or Samba.

Solution 4:

I have solved my problem.

First I installed wine. Then I downloaded HiSuite (Huawei's official PC suite) Link to download page and installed it.

Then I had to connect my phone to a windows PC, so the HiSuite daemon was installed on the phone.

When that is done, just open the HiSuite daemon on the phone and choose connect with wiFi. Enter the code on HiSuite on the PC, and voila. Now the phone is connected to ubuntu :)

You can backup the phone, import contacts and calendar (if you have installed MS outlook), manage the installed apps, install new apps (you have to download the apk files to your computer, this cannot be done in this software). You can edit, delete and create new contacts. And you can import the pictures taken.

It took a lot of hard work before I found out how to do this. And this article helped out :)

Hope this can be of use to others. I looked at a forum that this can work on other android phones as well. You just have to have the HiSuite daemon installed on the phone.